Never in a million years would I have imagined that America's only F1 race would be on a crowded residential street in Jersey. This blows!!

Monaco is not crowded or residential? Singapore? Valencia? If the race was in Camden I would see your point but you could throw a baseball into midtown Manhattan from the track.

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Originally Posted by JetBlack5OC

Something on the West Coast would be nice or even something like Miami. Jersey just doesn't have a good sound to it. F1 needs something upscale. Put it in a vacation spot, make it an inviting destination.

Yeah, NYC is certainly not a vacation destination and definitely not upscale at all...

The track is INCHES into NJ and will probably be labelled the Grand Prix of New York or US Grand Prix anyway. The NY Jets and NY Giants have shared a stadium that is set miles into New Jersey for decades and nobody says boo. I can't imagine this being called the Weehawken GP or the Jersey GP.

Profiling based on TV shows or stereotypes it pretty lame. Did you guys worry that the track in Korea was going to be surrounded by nail salons?

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I think a purpose built track was necessary. City street races typically suck as far as race quality goes. Having the purpose built track made it 'ok' to have the Jersey city race. But with only the Jersey city race, I feel let down. I want my f1 race and eat it too. (Enjoy it at least.)

Not to mention, I would enjoy the prospect of having track days on a full fledged F1 track. Not having to pretend to go on it while I am waiting on stop lights.

For the moment, until it is fully cancelled I will just assume the media is going to frenzy this because of a lack for any other F1 news. As with all things, they go up and the go down.

It will likely change by next week, and I know the promoters don't want to just let the race go. They all seem to want to put it on, so here's to hoping they work it out. Plus, no one here should want this race to fail. The Jersey race is in motion, having Austin would only be a plus. No one is asking you to choose between them.

Bernie is either blowing smoke, making Media hyper about the upcoming new season, or just putting pressure of the constructor/organizers of the Austin GP.

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Bernie Ecclestone is on the verge of axing the United States Grand Prix before even its first edition.

Earlier this week, construction on the Circuit of The Americas ground to a halt because of a dispute between Formula One, race promoters and developers.

Tavo Hellmund's Full Throttle Production was believed to own the rights to host the race, however, the contract was recently cancelled by Ecclestone after Hellmund was found to be in breach.

And although Ecclestone attempted to agree a deal with the Circuit of The Americas, COTA claimed in a statement that "the contract between Formula One and Circuit of The Americas has not been conveyed to Circuit of The Americas per a previously agreed upon timetable."

This has thrown the race's place on the 2012 calendar into doubt with Ecclestone saying the only reason there is no contract is because COTA have not issued a guarantee that the F1 supremo will be paid.

"We've done everything we bloody well can do to make this race happen," Ecclestone told Press Association.

Explaining the situation, the 81-year-old said: "We had an agreement with Full Throttle Productions.

"Everything was signed and sealed, but we kept putting things off like the dates, various letters of credit and things that should have been sent, but nothing ever happened.

"Then these other people (COTA) came on the scene, saying that they wanted to do things, but that they had problems with Tavo.

"They said they had the circuit, and that they wanted an agreement with me. I told them they had to sort out the contract with Tavo, which they said they would.

"But that has gone away now because we've cancelled Tavo's contract as he was in breach.

"We've waited six months for him to remedy the breach. He knows full well why we've cancelled. He's happy.

"But these other people haven't got a contract. All we've asked them to do is get us a letter of credit.

"We are looking for security for money they are going to have to pay us. That is via a letter of credit, normally from a bank.

"If people don't have the money they find it difficult to get the letter of credit, and so we don't issue a contract."

Pressed as to whether the United States GP will be dropped when the official calendar is revealed on December 7th, Ecclestone said: "Yes, it will be, for sure, 100 percent."

Ummm....The Austin track is less than 10 miles from the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. And less than 15 miles from the center of downtown Austin. It is definitely not in the middle of no where, unless we have different definitions for that statement.

Also Texas has three of the top ten most poplulated cities in the US. All within easy driving distance of the track location.

This would be great if it were near I35, but it's truly in the middle of a bunch of country roads. The area south of the airport is rural. Just look at Silverstone to see what a pain in the ass a lack of infrastructure presents for race weekends. If Austin had plans to run the light rail out there, build some roads, use the buses, etc., it might work, but they're treating it like a burden and doing their best to avoid it. Just getting from the airport (which doesn't have rail support) to the track will be a mess even with a car.

I have two sisters that both live near downtown Austin and one's an F1 fan. I'd absolutely love for this to work out, but it's a mess. Look no further than Motorsports Ranch in Cresson, TX, a car country club, that's technically in the DFW metroplex. It's a serious pain in the ass to get to from downtown Dallas and if you tried to run an actual event there, with six figures of fans out there, it would bring that rural area to its knees, much like the NASCAR track north of Ft. Worth.

Monaco is not crowded or residential? Singapore? Valencia? If the race was in Camden I would see your point but you could throw a baseball into midtown Manhattan from the track.

Jersey =/= Monaco. Looking at the photos and videos coming from people who drove the track it doesn't look anything like either of the tracks you mentioned. Are they only going there for the view of NYC?

. Look no further than Motorsports Ranch in Cresson, TX, a car country club, that's technically in the DFW metroplex. It's a serious pain in the ass to get to from downtown Dallas and if you tried to run an actual event there, with six figures of fans out there, it would bring that rural area to its knees, much like the NASCAR track north of Ft. Worth.

Shhh...don't tell anyone about this. I like quiet member days with no traffic on the track...

This would be great if it were near I35, but it's truly in the middle of a bunch of country roads. The area south of the airport is rural.

I am fairly certain that part of the entire project was improving the road bandwidth to accommodate the race. Just as they did with Texas Motor Speedway when it was built.

I would give the promoters and organizers enough credit to anticipate that rural 1 lane each way roads weren't going to support a 100k+ event. This isn't Tilke's first rodeo.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Bread

Look no further than Motorsports Ranch in Cresson, TX, a car country club, that's technically in the DFW metroplex. It's a serious pain in the ass to get to from downtown Dallas

MSR is more like 1hr+ from Downtown Dallas. Not really the same comparison. I think the worry that the roads won't be robust enough is ridiculous. If the event goes back on schedule, the infrastructure support would be part of it. Both the Korean and Indian GP had sufficient roads and they are even further outside of town I believe.

MSR is more like 1hr+ from Downtown Dallas. Not really the same comparison. I think the worry that the roads won't be robust enough is ridiculous. If the event goes back on schedule, the infrastructure support would be part of it. Both the Korean and Indian GP had sufficient roads and they are even further outside of town I believe.

If the State Comptroller is balking at the $25M event fee, I doubt they're going to go for infrastructure improvement. Last I looked, a mile of six lane road was more than that event fee, and they'd need quite a bit of that.

My point is that the promoters promised a lot of state involvement, and with the current trend, that simply isn't going to happen. Putting the track closer to civilization and getting support from the city/county/state might have been slightly beneficial.

If the State Comptroller is balking at the $25M event fee, I doubt they're going to go for infrastructure improvement. Last I looked, a mile of six lane road was more than that event fee, and they'd need quite a bit of that.

My point is that the promoters promised a lot of state involvement, and with the current trend, that simply isn't going to happen. Putting the track closer to civilization and getting support from the city/county/state might have been slightly beneficial.

I still think you are putting too little faith in everyone that was involved with the project to think that this wasn't considered.

They have enough business sense to know that it doesn't matter what you have if no one can get to it.

Texas has a long history of failed private automotive ventures that didn't get their public funding in order, so no, I don't have much faith in these clowns, and it's starting to look justified.

Maybe I am just surprised that the FIA/Tilke/Ecclestone would let them make a track without a proper road to get people there. I imagine that would have been covered at some point in the discussion.

I wonder what the situation is with the other race series, MotoGP and V8 Supercars. If they had contracts already in place that would suck that the lack of an F1 contract took away this race for them.

Also, in the PlanetF1 article Ecclestone said that Hellmunk was happy with how things turned out. That sounds very odd since he was the champion for this whole thing getting off the ground. I wonder if his interests moved to the Jersey race once it got off the ground and he forsook the Austin race.

Jersey =/= Monaco. Looking at the photos and videos coming from people who drove the track it doesn't look anything like either of the tracks you mentioned. Are they only going there for the view of NYC?

I sure hope it doesn't look like another track as a season of cookie cutter races would be mighty boring. You said Jersey is crowded and residential and I simply reminded you that Monaco, Valencia, and Singapore are as well. I didn't mention anything about status, prestige, history, or even the design of the fucking track so please pump the brakes before saying I believe the track or event will be of the same caliber.

I have no illusions that Jersey is anything more than it is... a state that aggravates the shit out of me when I need to fly from Newark but you guys keep dwelling on the word "Jersey." You can get a similar view of the city from Queens or Brooklyn, would that have made this easier to swallow? This race will be, for all intents and purposes, the Grand Prix of Manhattan that happens to take place one thousand feet to the west... in New Jersey.

Have any of those complaining actually been to Weehawken? The waterfront where the race will take place happens to be a very upscale area (as is much of northern NJ, for that matter). You're talking about million dollar views of the Manhattan skyline from the grandstands vs trees in Texas... give me a break. Don't we have enough tracks with sand and palm trees? I welcome this to the mix.

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